Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 by Adam Wagner
Huntington?
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pirates are prepared to name Cleveland Indians’ advance scout Neal Huntington general manager. The hire seems like it could be a potentially good one, but there are at least three reasons for discomfort.
1) It seems like Frank Coonelly identified the Indians as the organization that he wanted to emulate and, after being denied Chris Antonetti it appears as if Coonelly may have tried to hire another person from that organization. Emulating a team like Cleveland makes sense in theory, but each team has to do business its own way. If Coonelly picked one team to copy and focused on hiring someone from that team during the process, he did not do his due diligence by the search (I know, he interviewed LaCava, Bernazard, and that guy whose name starts with a Z).
2) The Post-Gazette is the only place reporting this. The Pirates’ website stated that he was the leading candidate yesterday, but nowhere else is reporting the hire; not Fox, not CBS, not ESPN, not CNN, and not even the Trib. Remember that the PG first reported the Coonelly story but that it was confirmed by Ken Rosenthal. This story has not been confirmed by someone of that ilk, meaning that this could still be very much an open contest.
3) The information about this guy sounds exactly like Dave Littlefield’s. In fact, they worked together in the Expos’ front office in 1997 (thanks to Vlad at Bucs Dugout for that scoop). Also, Littlefield and Huntington have the same degree in sports management from the University of Massachusetts. That is scary, no matter who the candidate is.
All in all, though, this looks like it could be a very good hire. I like the Pirates’ philosophy of looking at people who have been generally overlooked for high level front office positions (Coonelly and now, apparently, Huntington). It could make for an interesting offseason and next few years here.
More to come on this later.
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